Strawberry fields forever

‘Twas the best of times December 26, 2011

That day

As shards of gold

Pierced the bellowing, dark skies

A dash of red petals

A sprinkle of green

Crinkled under our rain-soaked feet

That walk

The things we said

Like the raindrops

Made a puddle of water

That was forever

To be

Like a river

I ran through the woods

The mountains and wild shadows

There was a dream

I was chasing

There was nothing to remember

No corner of an old road

With a puddle of water

Only a blue haze

The frozen earth

And another night in the woods

To be fought through

My oldest memory of happiness was the week or two I spent during the winters with my grandparents, my Mom’s parents. I was very young, ten maybe younger, so this is from a long time back, and hence a lot of the details have withered in my memory. Nevertheless looking back, it fills me with a lovely warmth, to have known this couple before sickness and old-age left only a husk of them. I was always slightly wary of my grandfather, I think everyone was, he was a man of few words, had served as an engineer in the Air-force for several years before opting out with voluntary retirement, working with Indian Airlines and subsequently several private airlines post-retirement from the latter. His Air-force life had left an indelible mark on his life, he was a stickler for discipline, spent hours in dusting every tiny household article, even switch-boards and had a thing for shining shoes, which again he indulged in a large-scale, gathering every shoe in the house regardless of who it belonged to for cleaning. He also had a thing for routine and reading the dictionary for leisure. Sadly I don’t remember having any fun conversations with him, I don’t even think he ever had had fun, or knew what it meant, his life had been a hard one, and my window to it was through my grand-mother’s stories. My grand-mother was a lovely lady, in those days Calcutta was ravaged by frequent power-cuts, and so in the evenings when I was staying over, we would be huddled together in darkness, she and I around a couple of candles, with her tea and some evening munchies, telling stories. She told me stories of my grand-father as a kid, a dutiful young boy in a large, wealthy household, in Lyallpur (today known as Faislabad) in Pakistan, of old-world India, and lives that would’ve have gone on tranquil and content but for the devastation that was wrecked by the Partition. His family had fled suddenly, one night as flames burst through their town, leaving behind everything, home, their roots, lives and were flung into the dark recesses of uncertainty. I believe there were many things he lived through as a child, the painful process of being uprooted that left my grand-father blighted for life. It was never again going to be the same for him. I was struck with awe as my she described the struggles he went through to re-build his life, not falling in shambles, getting himself an education, working to support his family and siblings. Years later I remember my grand-father staying up the night, something I never otherwise saw him doing, because ‘The Train to Pakistan’ was playing on TV, because some of it had been filmed in Faislabad, and in his eyes I saw the deep longing for the place he belonged to, where he could never go back and for the ties that were severed but had lived on in the scars and ravages of a life that had ensued. There were other things I learnt of through my grand-mother, her child-hood, their wedding, evenings they spent as a young, newly wedded couple in Agra with the beauty of the Taj Mahal soaked in moonlight for company, such and other things which neither me nor any of my generation or the next would ever see. But most importantly somewhere in those evenings with her stories, my stories were born, she started having me write them, stories and poems, she critiqued and improvised, it was a lot of fun. It was a cycle that remained with us for some time , before she was dilapidated, and couldn’t maybe care, but even then I hope remnants of our stories, the warm glow of our time together lived somewhere within her just as it has lived within me.

Stories and me have had a thing forever, that continued in school as well. I told stories as some of us were huddled together in free periods, when a certain Hindi Miss had run out of things to teach or needed to slow down and she asked for volunteers in class, which was always me and again I told stories on the school bus. And the source of this story telling was in everything I was reading as a kid and a little bit in what I was coming up with. I was quite an avid reader, we got an assortment of children’s magazines, Nandan in Hindi, Target, Reader’s Digest, some other children’s stuff I didn’t like very much and fast outgrew. My magazines remained stashed nicely, they were most cherished, often re-read and for a long time after Nandan and Target stopped being published (which was some six to seven years after I had started on them) I just couldn’t bring myself to get rid of them. I think I finally did that sometime after I started college, and it wasn’t easy even then.

I think the other happy time in life for me has been in school and of course the school-bus. Our school bus was like a story in many ways, had its own characters. There was the group hanging out, the ever interesting gossip, games, even hide and seek with a certain durwan and the mashis to secure the best seats, complete with the blaring filmi music. Friends were made, and for a very long time everything in the world would be shared on these trips, everyday, to and from school. These were people you would wait to see again the next day, and when you were sad, unsure, afraid, you shared it with them. You sought advice, you trusted, you loved, sometimes you even grew apart for a certain number of days/years, but then you came together like is in a happy ending.

Presidency College, Calcutta. I will say this, I am immeasurably glad destiny got me to Presidency, can’t think of another time in my life that was as exhilarating and action packed as were those days. And if you are a Presidencian you will know what I mean, you will know that no other place in Calcutta has as much character, history and life than does Presidency. Cocooned in the alive and kicking environs of College Street, my college years at Presidency have been unforgettable. From making notes, drawing up unending specimens for our Zoology lab notebooks, to never ending adda, dissecting the dynamics of class politics, falling in love, discussing other people falling in love, their crushes, your crushes, music sessions, finding your very own pet amongst the campus dogs, deliberating, procrastinating, learning, falling, striving and steering through the crisis of growing up you did everything in those corridors, lover’s lane, even the library and canteen. From discovering intelligent Bengali regional cinema, being bitten by the hatibagan bug buying tonnes of junk jewelry as a result, the endless, seemingly meaningless hanging out at Coffee house and several other places around and about College street, the weekly group trips from college to New Market, the study-sessions, hangout sessions in the cool confines of the British Council, re-discovering the magic of pujo, my first ever trip to Kumartuli before pujos, to going on a wildlife safari and spotting tigers, a lot of firsts happened in Presidency. And even today, I can’t imagine going back to Calcutta without making at least one trip to revisit the college and relive the best it had to offer.

Seasons changed

The woods turned green

Gold

And naked

New dreams were woven into my tapestry

Like a river

I had come so far

And yet

Some days when the skies were raging

The earth wet and longing

A drop of gold

Breaks through

And it seems like I’m at the corner

Of an old road

With a puddle of water

That was forever

To be